The Scottish Government is facing criticism for funding the pursuit of a technological solution to teachers' workload problems, with the country's largest teaching union instead calling for a cut in class contact time to finally be delivered. Here, education specialist James McEnaney explores the main issues.
What is the government doing?
The Directorate for Learning within the Scottish Government is putting up £1m in funding to support the “development of digital products” that can help to address the workload crisis currently affected the teaching profession.
Officials admit that that “workload, expectations and demands on teachers has increased” over recent years and that the tasks allocated to teachers “often exceed available working time”. However, they claim that we don’t really know enough about what this looks like for teachers in their working lives, or how the profession feels about the issue.
In an attempt to solve this alleged problem, a new ‘challenge’ will run with the ultimate goal of developing some sort of technological solution that can reduce teachers’ workloads. According to the official website, the programme “is not focused on the face-to-face aspects of teacher roles but on the more administrative aspects.” You can read the full details here.
The scheme is being operated by CivTech.
What is Civtech?
This is a programme developed by the Scottish Government that aims to support the creation of digital tools to solve “real problems faced by government departments, public sector organisations and charities.” In fact, it was the world’s first Government-run ‘accelerator’ for digital public services.
CivTech issues ‘challenges’ related to specific problems and invites organisations to bid to help solve these problems. Launched in 2016, it is now hosting the eleventh round of challenges. According to information provided to The Herald, more than 80 percent of successful participants from the first round are still in operation, and more than 90 percent of “Accelerator companies” go on to receive follow-up contracts.
You can read more about the programme here.
Why are the union annoyed?
The government is putting money into a new idea to cut workload, but the country’s biggest teaching union is unhappy. Why?
Some important context here is that the EIS is currently balloting teachers for strike action as a result of the workload pressures facing the profession.
At the heart of this dispute is the [[Scottish Government]]’s failure to honour an SNP manifesto promise to reduce class contact time, which is the amount of time that teachers spend actually delivering lessons each week. Despite a commitment to cut this by 90 minutes per week, no serious progress has been made for four years, with the government and councils blaming each other, and teachers pointing the finger at both of them.
Now the Scottish Government has come along and announced funding for some sort of technological solution to the workload problem, while claiming that we don’t really know enough about the issue, how it impacts on teachers’ professional lives, or how they feel about it – all of which simply opens the government to the accusation that it is entirely out of touch with the teaching profession.
The EIS says that it has provided “a great deal of data” to the government, and is therefore unimpressed by the idea that a new digital product – costing up to £1m – is what we really need.
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